Playing at Distraction
by nancystagerat
Summary: He didn't say anything. What was there to say? That Michael Rivkin was dead and it wasn't like he'd find out? Established Tiva, companion to "Staying the Night," if you squint.


_**A/N: This could be a sequel to "Staying the Night," if you squint real hard. It's not necessary to read that one first, but it establishes the relationship I'm playing with here if anyone starts wondering. **_

_**I own nothing, except the robe that inspired Ziva's.**_

* * *

Tony would never have pegged Ziva for a fuzzy bathrobe sort of woman. In the seven months he'd been spending his nights at her place, he'd never once seen her wearing anything but the sweatshirt, camisole tops and pajama shorts she always slept in. He could picture her in a slinky satin robe, if anything, maybe in a burgundy or green that complemented her skin tone, but not the fleecy blue and mint number she opened the door in. This one was downright _fluffy_. So much so that the damn thing left him wondering what exactly she was wearing under it. If she was wearing anything at all.

That robe practically swallowed her, it left so much to the imagination.

"Don't you look cozy," he grumbled. He usually at least liked a _hint_ of skin to give him ideas.

Of course, it didn't help that she looked warmer than a cat in a sunbeam while he was jacket-less, cold, and just barely in out of the rain.

Her eyes traveled up and down the length of him standing in her doorway. Rain spatters darkened the shoulders of his t-shirt. His jacket protected the pizza box he clutched tight enough to make the cardboard buckle under his fingers, a _Princess Bride_ DVD was clamped beneath his arm, and he did his very best to look as cold and pathetic as possible with his shoulders all hunched up around his ears. Ziva's mouth quirked up at the corners.

"Quite cozy," she smirked, plucking both box and jacket from his hands. A quick flash of her dark eyes later, she left him standing on her threshold and padded back towards the living room. Tony watched, as usual, for the swing of her hips, but the fluffy trenchcoat hid even that from him. Ziva set up shop on the coffee table, dark eyes peering expectantly through long lashes. Tony was only too happy to oblige her, but maintained his best wet hen impression in hopes to con his way into her embrace.

He didn't need to do very much conning. In fact, after he'd slipped the DVD into the slot, Ziva held her arm out to him. Even closed her fingers around his damp shoulder when he settled into the couch beside her. He pressed the play button on the remote.

This was not normal.

"We've watched this one already," Ziva groaned, rolling her eyes at him.

"I like _The Princess Bride_."

"Out of all the movies you could have chosen, it _had_ to be this one again?"

"You will not win this argument with your ninja tricks, Zee-vah." Tony raised his chin an inch or two, narrowed his eyes. "This would be the part where you say 'as you wish' and give in."

"This movie is awful. The acting is awful. That _line_ is awful—"

"Yeah, well, so was the rain I stood in while you took your sweet time buzzing me in," he sniffed and shivered as a drip of water ran down his spine. "Suffer, David. _Suffer_."

"Cold, Tony?" she asked, pushing up her sleeves and running a hand once up and down his back. She leaned down to pull a slice of chicken and broccoli from the box, and he noticed the pink tinge to the inside of her arm, her skin soft-looking and scrubbed so clean it was _just_ this side of raw. The thought that he'd like to run his tongue over it stopped forming halfway when she started tracing concentric circles under the hem of his shirt.

If the evening's already lengthy list of Things Ziva Does Not Ever Do was any indication, at this rate Tony half expected her to offer him the slice, and had to admit he was slightly relieved when she sunk her teeth into it instead. His eyebrows rose. It was just a shade unnerving, Ziva initiating contact. Even more that she was doing so warmly. Not teasing, not malicious, not gloating, just…normal.

Or, what would've been normal for any other two people in the same situation.

He grabbed his own slice of pizza. "Who are you and what have you done with Ziva David?"

She cocked her head to the side. Tony's incredulous gaze ran her up and down a few times before meeting her eyes. "Really, Ziva? With the hugging and the fluffy robe? And _pastels_?"

"What is so strange?" She chewed and swallowed, licked the grease from her thumb, and his eyes followed her tongue. She stared at him for a beat and smirked. _Oooh. That wasn't fair. _"It is raining, I was cold, and this was in the back of my closet."

"Where the heck'd you find that thing? Moms-R-Us?"

She breathed in and set down the pizza, breaking the hold of his gaze. Her arm left the back of the couch behind him. "Abby, actually."

To anyone else, that would have sounded casual, normal. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary or special about it. Or evasive. But Tony noticed the cautious, clipped way she let the words fall from her mouth. His eyes narrowed imperceptibly, or so he hoped. He couldn't quite control his face the way she could just yet.

"Abby? Buy you something in happy colors?" He meant it to sound light. Banter between friends. It wasn't unusual for Abby to do some spontaneous gifting. What _was_ unusual was that the gift hadn't come in typical Abby skulls-and-roses print.

Ziva turned her attention to the movie. "She figured I would need something like this, after what happened to all my clothes at my last apartment."

Again with the clipped tone. He didn't like thinking about Ziva's last apartment.

Tony feigned nonchalance. "And you felt the need to unearth this…_monstrosity_…" he picked up the cuff of her fuzzy sleeve with two fingers as if it were something slimy, brought it to his eye level, and then let go, her arm flopping heavily back into his lap, "for what reason?"

He thought he saw one corner of her mouth quirk up, but she shifted beside him and when he looked again her face was smooth. The neck of her robe, however, had slipped open just enough for Tony to solve the problem of what she may or may not have been wearing under it. Her skin looked warm and alive, glowing with the same abraded flush he'd noticed on her arms, and the sight sent a thrill of heat southward.

"I got cold waiting for you."

The wet locks of her hair hung in the scattered waves over her shoulders, and Tony had to resist the urge to run his fingers through it. Instead he polished off the last of the crust he'd been working on.

"Okay, miss Ninja-Mossad-Madwoman, I'd like to have seen you get here faster—"

Ziva snorted. _Okay_. So she would've gotten here faster. But that didn't mean he had to admit it.

"Alright, I'd like to have seen you get here faster _without_ endangering the public welfare," he amended. "33rd Street intersection's flooded, so I had to go all the way around the freakin' block to get here, and then I had to stand outside while you took your sweet, sweet time buzzing me in, and _then_ I had issues getting the door open without dropping the pizza—" The exaggerated roll of her eyes was not lost on him. "No, really, it's a very delicate maneuver, you've got to kind of sidle in like this—"

He glanced over long enough to notice that his illustrative hand motions were completely lost on her. She'd brought a hand to her face and taken one finger in between her teeth, still looking pointedly ahead of her. Tony's relationship with that particular finger in her mouth sat squarely in the love-hate category; the images it brought to mind were more than agreeable, but the gesture was a clear sign something was eating at her. Combine that with the current list of Things Ziva Does Not Ever Do, and Tony was _this close_ to pushing the issue.

But it was still early as their nights tended to go; no need to create new issues before he could figure out what the current one was on his own. So instead he leaned over and pressed a kiss to the side of her face. A crooked smile curved up half her mouth. _There._ There was the look he'd been working for.

But soon enough it faded, and she lapsed back into her own thoughts by the time Humperdinck decided to take Buttercup as his wife. He wondered how long it would be before she caught him staring. Tony didn't have much of a wait. Vezzini had barely made it on-screen when Ziva felt his eyes on her.

"Movie not interesting enough for you, DiNozzo?"

"Since when do you call me DiNozzo? And if you're fishing for compliments, yes, I would rather look at you than a short balding man pretending to be Sicilian," he countered. Better to give a little now, cave for the sake of levity, than push too hard. He was nothing if not careful after seven months of this. "I mean, come on, does he sound Italian to you? Admittedly, it's just an 80's comedy, but still they could've stood to be a little more thorough with the—"

Ziva made a noise in her throat that sounded decidedly like a scoff. "Nice try."

Fine, if that was how she wanted to play it. He held one hand up in surrender, the other diving for a second slice of pizza. "Then what would you have me say, Dah-veed?" Tony asked around a mouthful of broccoli. Besides, if there was anything he knew after five years of working with her, it was that Ziva always had, and still did, enjoy catching him staring.

"Nothing, if you insist on showing me your food."

He swallowed. "Ha."

She knew how to play his game, and she played it well. The subtle fishing worked less and less as the weeks wore on. He'd kind of expected it at this point, but he was allowed to hold out a little hope once in a blue moon, and Tony was determined to exercise that right. Hope had a nasty habit of letting him down more than he'd liked, but after Africa…hope had come through for him big time. He'd been more inclined to trust it now and again since they'd all left Somalia alive.

His bunny-hop of faith (it hadn't quite made it to '_leap'_ caliber) turned out to be justified. Halfway through his second slice of pizza Ziva relaxed against his side, resting her hand on his knee. And as he reached for a third, she started gently raking her nails over his thigh.

Suddenly the rest of his dinner didn't seem like such a high priority anymore. One arm around her back and Tony pulled her close enough that even the movie faded to a dull drone in the background, let alone the raindrops pinging off the windows. His hand toyed absently with the ends of her hair, twirling her curls through his fingers as he absorbed the warmth of her palm stroking up and down his leg.

"Your hair got long since I met you."

"I did not think you were sentimental enough to notice something like that," she said, sliding her hand from his thigh up to his waist, her arm slung comfortably across his lap.

His eyebrows slanted. "Why wouldn't I?"

"You never were a one-woman kind of man, Tony," she answered, nuzzling her face into his shoulder. Her head, though, was tilted down. He couldn't see her expression, and she probably meant it that way. "Most of the time I am surprised if you remember their names."

Sometimes, many of those times feeling very much like _now_, Tony wanted nothing more than to come right out and ask what he was to her. _Friend_ had fallen short a long time ago, and lately even _partner_ in all its connotations no longer felt like it quite made the cut. What was the word for someone who just happened to come over religiously, and fell asleep holding her in her own bed every night, but never really _touched_ her? God knew he wanted to. Hell, he'd woken up more than once in the middle of the night needing to prevent his more base urges from sticking themselves where they didn't belong. Literally. Tony could only hope that Ziva had never felt him getting hot and bothered with her all pressed up against him. Or maybe that she had; sometimes he wasn't so sure if the risks still outweighed the benefits. It _had_ been seven months of this by now. And this _was_ the same Ziva David whose first conversation with him had been about phone sex.

No matter how he sliced it or how well he knew she didn't mean it like that, Tony couldn't help but feel just a little victimized; he had never been the most monogamous of men, but, in his defense, Ziva hadn't exactly given him reason to be. Guilt and a tinge of hurt flared under his skin and he wanted for a moment to ask if she had ever been a one-man woman. The words burned in his chest and he felt the flesh around his heart constrict to contain them, holding back the fight that would have brought her back to Michael and Israel and faceless men he'd never know and she wouldn't remember and thoughts he didn't want to entertain, like his finger stuck through a crack in a dam. He wouldn't ask it now. Instead he filed the charged question away for (hopefully no) future use.

And the next second his mind turned a full one-eighty and he found himself wanting to tell her that her name was the only one worth remembering, but it sounded like too much in his head. Too much still too soon.

Or rather, not enough coming years too late.

So instead he cupped her cheek in his hand and tilted her face upward, finally where he could see it and search through the coppery flecks in her eyes for some trace of thoughts chasing each other behind them. His thumb dragged itself over her cheekbone, and dry lips pressed a kiss to her forehead.

"I'll have you know, David, there's very little about you I don't notice." Too sentimental of him? Probably. But at least it was some proof that he _did_ possess that sentimental bone Ziva clearly thought he'd been lacking.

"Hmm," she said, and pulled her face from his hand.

"Like how tonight's been a smorgasbord of you doing very un-Ziva things."

Tony saw…_something_ flicker over her face, but as soon as it'd registered in his head she'd turned and pressed her lips to his, coaxing them apart with gentle pressure that went straight to his groin. If any man told him they could concentrate while being kissed like that, Tony would've called him a damn liar and an insult to the woman doing the kissing, who just happened to be sliding herself into his lap that very moment.

"And now," she purred, "do I feel like myself?" He hummed his approval against her lips, wrapping one hand in her hair and holding her there, forcing an already-lingering kiss to linger a few seconds more.

Ziva fought him for just an instant, a knee-jerk reaction when she tried to pull her lips away and couldn't. He felt her arms and back tense in a sudden flare of panic, and Tony unwound his fingers from her curls before she relaxed against him.

"Feels like Ziva," he said, kissing her once more, chastely; after what he was about to say, he probably wouldn't get to for a while. "Feels like Ziva when she's playing at distraction."

And there she went, rocketing back off his lap like he'd poured a furnace's worth of hot coals between them. The much more appealing heat she'd sent tearing paths to certain places farther south cooled real fast.

A look from suddenly hardened eyes met another from dark eyes flaring in something akin to, but not quite anger. No one else could, or ever would, be as singularly intimidating in a pastel fluffy robe as Ziva David, and Tony was not the least bit ashamed in admitting so.

"—Though I'm not sure which of us you're trying to distract."

She raked her hands through her hair, not looking at anything specific, and from the heavy way she carried herself Tony figured he'd touched a nerve she hadn't yet figured out the best way to bury.

"Ziva?"

"I'm fine."

"You're a lousy liar for someone who prides herself on duping polygraphs."

She pulled the cuffs of the robe down over her hands and scrubbed them over her arms. "Is it a crime, Tony, to want a little distraction now and then?"

"That's not what I'm asking." He watched her pace once more across the room, and finally settle against the frame of the far window.

"Take out my trash."

Tony blinked twice. "_What_?"

"Just…do it. Please." Ziva stared fixedly across the street, through sheets of pouring rain that were apparently conspiring against him.

So he did. Never mind the rain, never mind the cold. Never mind that his shoulders were more than damp and he was cold again by the time she buzzed him back inside. He found her in the kitchen, putting away the remains of their dinner. Tony tried to pull his wet shirt off one-handed, annoyance rising when the damn thing stuck over his head. "And that was for…? My health?" he asked through soggy cotton.

"Because it'd feel less like betrayal to me and more like…moving on."

The shirt came off with a sharp yank and Tony used it to rub his hair dry, not that it did much good. His ire subsided. "Ziva, _what_ did I just throw out?"

"A jacket that's been in the trunk of my car for…longer than I care to think about." Ziva shut the refrigerator and leaned back against the counter. Tony thought she looked almost conversational, or would have if it weren't for the muscle working in her jaw. "Michael's blood was still on it."

He didn't say anything. What was there to say? That Michael Rivkin was dead and it wasn't like he'd find out? Besides, it was a jacket, for chrissake, not one of the man's limbs. "It's, ah…not like you haven't, you know—"

"Yes, Tony, I know I have been through this before, I do not need to be reminded." Ziva barked, but the way she held herself gave evidence to the contrary. She hugged her arms, brought one index finger back between her teeth. "I couldn't do it myself. It felt like I—" She swallowed and her arms fell back to her sides, like whatever she was trying to contain had dissipated—or escaped. One hand worried the fluffy tie of the robe. "Michael meant something to me. I cannot pretend that he didn't."

"No one's asking you to." Tony would probably never know how much she'd cared for Michael; Ziva'd grown up with him, Tony couldn't pretend Michael away no matter how much he may have wanted to. And Tony wanted to a lot. It wasn't something he'd ever be okay with asking her; he wasn't _that_ insensitive. The parts of him that wanted to know exactly how much of herself she'd given to Michael were far outweighed by the parts that hoped she'd never say.

Ziva pushed herself off the counter and brushed past Tony. "What did you do?"

He scrambled for an answer and came up empty. "What did I do when…?"

"After Jenny died. When you went home to pack for the _Ronald Reagan_." The cabinet she was rummaging in slammed shut. "I know what—" she sighed, and he could practically see the words _what you did after you killed him_ hovering like an elephant between them. "—happened after Michael."

Tony took the canister of tea out of her hands and set it aside, reaching instead for the pitcher of water in the fridge. "Got a glass?" Ziva pointed to the drying rack beside the sink. "You want?" he asked as he poured. She shook her head. Tony took a long drag before answering, hoping it would open up his throat.

"I balled up the Hawaiian shirt and chucked it to the back of the closet. Haven't seen it since."

"So you just tried to _forget_."

"Not forget, Zee," he snapped. He'd tried that and gave up a long time ago. "I don't need physical evidence to remind me how bad I fucked up."

She looked as if she wanted to touch him. Her hand reached up halfway. "Tony—"

"Don't start." He took another swig from the glass. "I let go of the guilt a while ago."

Her hand fell back to her side. "Then what?"

"Drank myself into oblivion, sobered up and flew out to spend the next four months of my life on a boat fueled solely by testosterone." Ziva rolled her eyes.

"There's a line between remembering and being haunted, Zee."Tony set the empty glass in the sink and rubbed his hands up her fleecy arms, then back down and slid them inside the cuffs, fingering the still-flushed skin on the inside of her forearms. She felt warmer than usual, inflamed almost. "What'd you do when you found it?"

"Brought it up here. I was going to put it away." Ziva let him keep his hands inside her sleeves, closing her fingers around his wrists. "But I couldn't. The thought of…it bothered me."

"So having me throw it out feels…better, to you?" He didn't mean it to sound accusatory. He hoped to God she wouldn't take it that way.

"I—" she swallowed, a muscle in her jaw clenched once, but she met his eyes smooth-faced and deceptively unruffled. "What else is there to do with it?"

"I would say wash it," Tony began, "but somehow I don't think that was ever an option."

Ziva searched him with hooded eyes, and he couldn't decide if she was waiting for him to say something or too deep in her own thoughts to care. When she spoke finally, a pensive surface hid charged undercurrents she didn't feel comfortable expressing.

"Everything else I owned burned with him, Tony." One beat stretched into five. He set his empty glass down in the sink, waiting. "I had nothing left tethering me to Michael. After you brought me back I had build a life again, from nothing. And I was…thankful, in time. Forgetting felt easier."

He nodded once. If only it were that simple.

"I thought I had decided what parts of my life were important enough to keep. And then all of a sudden…" she trailed off. "We'd played together as children, Michael and Ari and I. Things I thought I'd let go of...I want to remember." Ziva sighed heavily, leaning back against the counter and shaking her head, as if to convince herself rather than him. "But I will not live with regret. I couldn't keep that thing. I couldn't keep his blood on my clothing and not feel…haunted."

She released one of his hands to push her hair behind her ears. "I know I must sound—irrational."

Tony shook his head. "Nothing wrong in doing what you have to, Zee."

"I am unsure if discarding it was…right of me, but at this point…I have moved on, Tony," Ziva said. "I needed to remind myself of that." Her hands tightened briefly around his wrists.

"By scrubbing your skin off and wearing the most un-Ziva thing in the history of the cosmos to take your mind off it?" Tony offered a crooked smile, which she accepted it with one of her own. "Did it help?"

"Enough, yes."

"What about the rest?"

She tugged his hands, leading him back to the couch. "I suppose I have you for that, yes?"

The crooked grin widened. "You could say that, David." Tony hoped "the rest" involved things that would take her mind—and his—far away from Rivkin.

Preferably minus one fluffy robe.

A man could dream, couldn't he?

"Yanno," he started, and Ziva yawned, letting go of his hands to turn off the long-forgotten movie. "Still can't get used to you wearing that thing. It's just so…." She shot him a glare conforming to normal— i.e. intimidating—Ziva standards, clutched the neck of her robe shut, and rolled her eyes. "Fine," he said, "I always liked you better in darker green, anyway—"

"Don't push it, Tony."

Ziva smiled, more easily this time.

"Hey," he raised his hands in surrender. "As you wish."

She threw the DVD case at his head.


End file.
